The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 900 points (3.2%), with travel stocks plunging, continuing their decline amid uncertainty due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, setting the Dow for is worst day in more than seven weeks.
Companies in the tech sector, health sector and consumer sector are the only companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average expected to post an increase in profit compared to a year earlier.
With the U.S. General Election only a week away, the stock market decline continues for its worst day in more than seven weeks amid political instability, as pollsters predict a landslide for the Democrats and Joe Biden.
Talks between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D), Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin (R), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) and President Donald Trump (R) over the second round of stimulus continue to falter amid Pelosi’s commitment to national testing, school funding and unemployment aid.
The instability over a stimulus to a lagging economy triggered a stock sell-off on Wall Street, fuelled by be a volatile economic climate in the wake of 10 million newly unemployed, and over 200,000 dead due to the Coronavirus Pandemic.
The U.S. reported an all-time high single-day spike in cases on the 23rd of October, with 83,757 new cases according to data collated by John Hopkins University. Cases have not dropped significantly since, and there is projected to be a rise towards the end of the year.
The wealth of 664 U.S. billionaires has surged $931 billion, according to analysis done by the Institute for Policy Studies, increasing from $2.95 trillion to $3.88 trillion, a rise of 31.6%. Amazon CEO and Founder Jeff Bezos’s wealth grew from $113 billion on March 18th to $203 billion on October 13th, an increase of 80%.
The upcoming U.S. Election between President Donald Trump (R), and former Vice-President Joe Biden (D), will take place on November 3rd, 2020. Trump is currently 9 points behind Joe Biden, signifying a significant difference between now and the 1.6% he was behind at this stage in the 2016 race against Hillary Clinton.
Voter enthusiasm is sky high, and more than 26 million have already voted, according to the US Elections Project, which is 6 times the number of votes cast by the same point in 2016. Democrats make up 53% of the early votes, and Republicans make up 36%.
